United States | News & Politics

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Supreme Court temporarily put on hold proposed new social studies standards for K-12 public school students that include conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The state’s high court issued a temporary stay on Monday while a lawsuit challenging the new standards is being litigated. The court’s order directs the State Department of Education to keep the previous social studies standards in place while the case is being decided.

At the direction of state Superintendent Ryan Walters, the standards were revised to include new language about the 2020 election and that the source of the COVID-19 virus was a Chinese lab, among other changes.

A group of parents and educators filed lawsuit in May, asking a judge to reject the standards, arguing they were not reviewed properly and that they “represent a distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective.”

https://archive.ph/SmN9t

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36016537

In the new collection of documents, according to CNN, two more pages from the “birthday book” appear – one of which includes a previously redacted name. 

Another address book belonging to the disgraced billionaire was also included, the outlet reported.

A top Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives is backtracking on a proposal that would have given Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to revoke American citizens’ passports if he decides they have provided “material support” to terrorists.

Under Mast’s original proposal, the secretary of state would have been empowered to refuse or revoke passports of people they deem to have materially supported terrorists.

Activists were especially concerned the provision could be used against critics of Israel, given Rubio’s aggressive move to revoke green cards and student visas from noncitizens who have publicly demonstrated support for Palestinians.

Luigi Mangione scored a major legal victory on Tuesday with a judge dismissing the two top state charges against him: first-degree murder and second-degree murder, both of which prosecutors had argued were terrorism crimes.

Mangione still faces an additional second-degree murder charge, as well as a federal murder charge, in the killing of United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson last December.

The judge overseeing Mangione’s state criminal case, Gregory Carro, said “the evidence put forth was legally insufficient” for the two terrorism-related charges, in a written decision that was posted during a 15-minute proceeding in Manhattan court on Tuesday.

“Counts 1 and 2, charging defendant with Murder in the First Degree (in furtherance of an act of terrorism) and Murder in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism, are dismissed as legally insufficient,” Carro wrote. “The People presented legally sufficient evidence of all other counts, including Murder in the Second Degree (intentional).”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36000866

Mildred Fish-Harnack (1902 - 1943)

Tue Sep 16, 1902

Mildred Elizabeth Fish-Harnack, born on this day in 1902, was an American literary historian, translator, and anti-fascist organizer in Nazi Germany. She was the only American woman executed on direct orders from Adolf Hitler.

Born in the United States, Fish-Harnack moved with her husband Arvid to Germany to continue her studies, eventually ended up at the University of Berlin. During her time there, Fish-Harnack became interested in the Soviet Union and communist thought.

In her lectures, Fish-Harnack encouraged her students to use Karl Marx as a "practical solution to the evils of the present". Amid financial difficulties at Berlin University and the rising Nazi movement, Mildred was let go from her teaching position in 1932.

Together with her husband, in 1932 Fish-Harnack formed a left-wing group that regularly met to discuss and debate contemporary political ideas. From these meetings arose a key part of the "Red Orchestra", a loose collective of anti-fascists committed to resisting the Nazi government during World War II.

Beginning in 1940, the group was in contact with Soviet agents in an attempt to thwart the forthcoming German attack upon the Soviet Union. Mildred herself even sent the Soviets information about the planned invasion, codenamed Operation Barbarossa.

Following the capture of German communist and Soviet collaborator Johann Wenzel, Nazi police were able to decipher Red Orchestra messages. On September 7th, Arvid and Mildred Fish-Harnack were arrested while on a weekend outing. Both were executed in custody.

Mildred's last words were purported to have been: "Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt" ("I loved Germany so much as well"). She was the only American woman executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler.

• Date: 1902-09-16
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, news.wisc.edu, womeninwisconsin.org.
• Tags: #Communism, #Labor, #Birthdays, #Fascism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

The Trump administration’s shakeup of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forced Mississippi to stop gathering critical data on women’s experiences before, during and after pregnancy – even as the state recently declared a public health emergency over its surging infant mortality rate.

Mississippi has suspended data collection for Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (Prams), a national database that has been integral to policymaking on maternal and infant health for nearly four decades, the Guardian has learned.

Prams functions as a partnership between state-level health officials and a little-known but influential CDC agency called the Division of Reproductive Health, which has lost most of its staff – nearly 100 people – in the Trump administration’s purges of federal workers, according to records in a lawsuit filed by several Democratic-led states over the purges.

A mass “doxing” effort to track down, intimidate and harass people perceived not to have sufficiently mourned the killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk was endorsed on Monday by JD Vance.

The US vice-president guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast on Monday and said that people who “see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder” should “call them out”. He added: “Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”

https://archive.ph/ziw6t

At approximately 7:05 am, University Police was notified of what appeared to be the body of a Black male hanging from a tree (at) central campus near the DSU pickleball course,” said Delta State University Chief of Police Michael Peeler. “We later identified the male subject to be Demartravion Reed of Grenada, Mississippi.”

“I saw no broken limbs,” he said. Roark declined to elaborate further, stating that the case was still under investigation. “I don’t think I should probably discuss this any further than that, my opinion is that it was self-done, and I have reasons for that.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6132937

If everything goes as planned, members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) will soon be able to return to a land they haven’t had access to since 1855.

CTUIR and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife are hoping to co-manage the proposed Qapqápa Wildlife Area, a roughly 11,500-acre tract of land linking the Umatilla and Walla Walla National Forests.

CTUIR and ODFW received a $22 million grant from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire the property and co-manage it as a wildlife area as part of the USDA’s State-Tribal Partnership Program.

The grant offers an opportunity to return land management of the area to its original stewards.

CTUIR is a confederation of three tribes of central Oregon: the Umatilla, the Walla Walla and the Cayuse. The proposed wildlife area is part of the land that was ceded by these three tribes in the Treaty of 1855.

“That land was the ancestral homeland of the tribes,” Anton Chiono, habitat conservation project manager, CTUIR Department of Natural Resources, tells Columbia Insight.

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